Saturday’s – “What’s on your mind?”

Here is a place to share things you’ve been thinking about lately. What kind of things?

Recent accomplishments in preparedness.

Projects being worked on.

Thoughts on world events.

Recent purchases & recommendations

Current events related to politics, terrorism, crime – whatever.

Go on an adventure or have fun? Share it!

Whatever is on your mind….

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My turn…..

AR Pistol. Building an AR this weekend. Love doing this.

Snowden. I’ve watched the movie Snowden several times. If even half of it is true it is an outrage against our 4th Amendment Rights. Good movie.

The Press. There has been talk of having press credentials to assist in gaining access in – or out – of an area during civil unrest/SHTF.

Sanitation. It cannot be over emphasized to keep lots of cleaning products on hand. I’m talking Dawn dish soap, hand soap, antibacterial stuff, Lysol, etc. The dollar store is a good place to stock up.

The Heat. The heat right now is devastating. I had a new air conditioner installed several months ago and it is working great. Grid down? Misery.

Retreat. Transferring more supplies to the retreat this weekend.

SOMETHING FOR YOU:

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Your turn……

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25 Comments

I was thinking about replacing my 16 year old Trane XL1200 with a new high efficiency unit a couple years ago when I had a minor repair needed. The technician was a neighbor and friend who I trust.We decided that the 4 ton beast that I have is so much better than any of the new options on the market for reliability and the fact that I have a monster of a solar power plant which makes the efficiency factor less important than it would be for most people. We decided that the old girl should be allowed to live on … and on. Nothing runs like a Trane. Especially and old one. 😉

I have a son-in-law who was raised in the HVAC business. He came over to evaluate my Trane XL 1200 when it went on the blink. The company who installed the system in 2001 looked at it and told me it had to be replaced to the tune of $18,000. My son-in-law fixed it for $20 worth of parts….capacitors were shot. He also told me the equipment, if I replace it in the next 5 – 10 years should run around $4,000. Big difference from the original contractor. Also, the newer model Trane units “engineered Obsolescence” into the units. That is, after about 5 years, it starts to break down. After about 10 years, you can’t buy the parts to repair the units….unless you are someone like my son-in-law. He recommended York over Trane by the way.

I got a mini-split with three ports and it has saved our necks up here in the NE, which has gotten a lot hotter than you’d think. These go on an outside wall and are connected by ducts to a heat pump so you have on demand heat or cold almost instantly by room. They do use a bunch of electricity and I haven’t looked into solar power. I can’t keep lifting out window units twice a year and these are ten times more practical. Plus, the Feds and my state have so many rebates that I think they knoocked off 30%. At my age, amortizing almost anything like solar power is unlikely!

This is where we got ours, wtf too far for you but a good info page. Engineer’s friend, who he posted about below that got solar to power these…that’s the way to go. These guys didn’t know anything about that. I’ve only had them a year but if I’m freezing, I can go into a room and heat that room while my wife, who is always hot, is Cooling in s different room. Research Rhee,extricated costs but they are a game changer for us.

Engineer775 on YouTube (one of my favorites) specializes in off grid solutions, has a one ton mini split system that actually runs almost exclusively off solar during the day, no batteries, straight solar during the day, it’s a hybrid system meaning while you have good sun it uses that, when you don’t it pulls from grid, does not back feed grid, here I have to pay $50 a month, and the power company decides if they want to pay me for it or not, if they do it’s do low that it’s a joke, FPL Florida power and light has lobbyists hard st work to keep us Floridians buying their supply, just because a company is non profit doesn’t mean they can’t pay themselves very, very well, look at goodwill, what is it that goes to help people 3%? It’s a joke, just like utilities, the big guys are making a ton, do you think they want to see solar take hold in the sunshine state? But back to the hybrid system, this is my plan for airconditioning grid down, the biggest expense in solar is batteries, this system uses three 270 watt solar panels that are included with your mini split system, for me that translates close to a $100 a month in savings, if my memory serves me the system is $3,000.00 for mini split, and panels, I don’t think that includes wiring, or freon lines, but that can be picked up at Lowes. It’s a 48 volt system so your panels can be placed a good long ways away, you can use number 12 wire, and have very little power loss, unlike a 12 volt solar system. Right now the biggest you can get this system is one ton, meaning that it will not cool a entire house, lower level or basement yes, main living area of a home yes, but not the entire home, a small cabin in a big out location, perfectly😏

Lately I’ve been thinking about group\community meals during grid down. Example – feeding large groups of people within your retreat\compound, type of menus, etc. If Its better to store items to prepare large meals or just what you aand your family eats. There is a book out there that describes how to make modern homes liveable post grid down, can’t think of its name but a friend showed me it last year while home from building strawbale homes in the Moab. The keys were airflow, insulation and shade.

I have an offer on a house, should be closing in 2 weeks if all goes well (fingers crossed!). It will enable me to FINALLY get out of the big city (pop 600,000) and live in a small town (pop 2100) and have some freaking peace & quiet! Don’t worry, I grew up in a small town so I’m not going to be completely culture-shocked, ha ha. I’ll still have to commute for work (45 miles) but I have a pretty good start on a get-home bag and my best friend (military veteran & registered nurse, also a prepper) lives between my work & where my new house will be, so that’s a good waypoint if I need to hoof it home for any catastrophic reason.

Being a prepper means some crazy moving issues, though! Do I take my 5-gallon & 7-gallon water containers full, or empty them out & refill when I get to the new place? (Only good thing about my city is really great-tasting water with no fluoride added, and water is included in my rent currently but I’ll have a water bill after I move, plus the stored water already has stabilizer in it.)

I was thinking about getting chickens after I move, but husband hates the idea. I’ll be mulling that one over for a while. Maybe I will just bribe my new neighbors with baked goods for fresh eggs, since I saw they have nearly a dozen happy, fluffy chickens. I’m also thinking about setting up a really simple water catchment system at the new house, just for using to water garden plants at first. I do have a Big Berkey if I needed to drink the water.

Thanks for this blog! I don’t comment often but I catch up on your posts at least a couple times a week.

Congratulations Jeannie! That’s a great move, I constantly think about buying a homestead and moving into the mountains, but at 41 I’m not sure how to make it work and still have a good income, buy the end of the year I’ll have my second home paid for, I think if I can get four rental properties paid for that I could live off income from that, but every year that goes by I yearn to be on my own homestead even more! As soon as I can figure out a income I’m making the move! Really happy to see someone taking the the leap!

As usual, everything in the garden has come in at the same time. I even planted with a staggered maturation time considered. Really running ragged for the next two to three weeks.

I have put together a list of veggies that will need to be grown in a SHTF scenario to sustain the family. With the list, I have gone on line and ordered packets of the non-GMO heirloom seeds from Sustainable Seed Company. I’ll try the seed packs for the winter veggies.
In addition, if we do experience a problem with our infrastructure and medical support, I have a package with 26 medicinal herbs from https://heirloomseeds. Of course it helps to have books on herbal uses such as “The New Healing Herbs” by Michael Castleman. And, don’t just sow the herbs in the garden. They can be quite invasive and should be planted in planters or pots.

So much for my preaching. I’ve been thinking of two projects. One is a greenhouse to capture the winter growing season and the second is a spring house to use the water from the creek for refrigeration. I’ll have to assemble a water ram pump to move water up the hill to the structure. I’ve seen the “100 year” flash flood on this creek. It went from a mere trickle of 2-3 inches depth to about 6 feet during a period of a week’s heavy rains.

Oren – same here. Although I spread out the plantings quite a bit of the garden went by at the same time. I have no squash producing plants right now but hopefully will in the next week or so. Squash bugs are the worst I have EVER seen and caused the early death of a few viable plants. I sprayed last night hoping to get rid of them as I have an infestation. In a true SHTF someone would be spending a good amount of time picking and squashing the little bastards. Now? No such time.

Vegetable Gardening This year I experimented with sub irrigated gardening I found doing this process one tomato plant will produce about the same yield as 2 tomato plants planted in traditional soil and this is the first time I grew carrots that actually looks like a carrot and so sweet sub irrigated gardening requires less watering if you use the suggested type of potting mixture with worm castings incredible results . anybody have any experience with FN 15 DMR ?.
Just recently had 28 try axle dump truck loads of topsoil delivered that’s about 560 tons for nothing going to use quite a bit of it increasing the height and size of my backstop on my shooting range and utilize more of it when I put in a root cellar Will not have to dig down as deep if I increase the volume on top to about 5 feet.
Recently put in a Dakota alert Solar powered break beam infrared driveway detector it works incredible no false alarms and nobody has gotten through it without setting the alarm off.

Keep your fingers crossed for me and my wife as we have our house on the market and looking for a house with enough land to be our bug out location. As everyone knows, the best situation is to live on your bug out land. I have some property now that serves as our bug out location but it is 80 miles away. The housing market (in Georgia) is crazy right now, houses are selling fast as they hit the market so it is difficult to find the location and house that is what we need. We will keep on looking for the right place and we continue to look UP.